Cel towers are of course, ubiquitious in today’s landscape. Yet, lately in Los Angeles, I am noticing more and more that it’s not only are the people fake…so is everything else!
I love this latest try at deception. There is a pretty good website called Fraud Frond that focuses on these strange arborations of nature.
I just rewatched this 2004 BBC documentary about the ‘Bush Years’ (among many, many other things). It’s not a ‘conspiracy movie’ but rather more of a history lesson about the failure of sixties liberalism and what powers gained within the void that surfaced in the post-communist, post-ideological world.
The episode on Afghanistan was sobering to say the least.
Watch the trailer here.
Watch the whole show here.
“Consistent with our longstanding, global business strategy, ExxonMobil would pursue business opportunities as they arise in Iraq, just as we would in other countries in which we are permitted to operateâ€.
Len D’Eramo (Exxon Mobil Spokesperson)
After 5 years, this outgoing regime in Washington is finally coming clean about what it was doing by invading Iraq. No mystery to anyone whose been paying attention but still, criminal oil speculators have driven the price of crude so high that they feel they can talk openly about this with outraging the American Public who are being fleeced at the pumps.
Gee, I always thought that government, big business and the military all working in tandem to pursue their own economic gain as well as geo-political control of foreign territories was called Fascism? No doubt Bush, Cheney and others in this administration will be receiving very lucrative financial payoffs for all their work in hijacking the state to help their cretinous oil buddies become billionaires. And both Bush and Exxon Mobil alike are laughing themselves silly as talk radio listeners drive to the gas station to put $5-a-gallon fuel in their car while they listen to pandering pundits defending and making excuses for the bastards.
When Iran was nationalizing their oil industry, the US helped engineer a coup-d’etat in 1953. This is not even disputed:
“In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs“.
Madeleine K. Albright (US Secretary Of State, 2000)
That short-sightedness eventually led to the 1977 Islamic Revolution in Iran which resulted in a mutual severing of ties of whose effects are very much still with is typified by the blustery rhetoric of both the stupid right-wing President of Iran and the stupid right-wing President of the United States.
From what I’ve heard about Iraq presently, these decisions about their oil and who owns it are creating fractures in existing fragile coalitions in Iraq. Fractures that will likely change the political landscape in Iraq (such as it is) in ways that politicians and pundits in the US can have no idea. Nothing has gone according to plan because the “planners” are ideologues not historians. They see themselves as makers of history when in reality they are being blown by winds they cannot see. These winds blowback.
(from Thursday’s New York Times)
June 19, 2008
Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back
by Andrew E. Kramer
BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.
There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.
“The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.“ Erasmus
This is a lovely blog featuring random passive-aggressive notes of kindness.
(from the BBC)
Top US general doubts Iran proof
The most senior US military officer has said there is no proof the Iranian government has directly armed Shia groups fighting in Iraq. Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, appeared to contradict claims made by US officers in Iraq.
The US presented evidence this week it said proved the “highest levels” of Iran’s government were supplying arms used by Shia militants in Iraq. Gen Pace said all it proved was “things made in Iran” are being used in Iraq. “We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran,” Gen Pace said while visiting Australia. “But I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit.” In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, Gen Pace repeated his assertions. “What [the evidence] does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers.”
(from AP)
Putin says US aggression feeds nuclear ambitionsThe Russian president took aim at the Bush administration, saying the US was stoking a new nuclear arms race by overstepping its borders. In a speech on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed US policy for inciting other countries to seek nuclear weapons to defend themselves from an “almost uncontained use of military force” — a stinging attack that underscored growing tensions between Washington and Moscow.
“Unilateral, illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem, they have become a hotbed of further conflicts,” Putin said at a security forum attracting senior officials from around the world. “One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.” In what his spokesman acknowledged was Putin’s harshest criticism of the US, the Russian leader attacked US President George W. Bush’s administration for stoking a new arms race by planning to deploy a missile defense system in eastern Europe and for backing a UN plan that would grant virtual independence to Serbia’s breakaway province of Kosovo.
On the eve of the clown’s announcement that he plans to escalate the war further. It’s interesting to see what is occurring at the top.
All the military that don’t agree with the “surge” end up feeling the “purge”.
Bush said he was gonna listen the the commanders, but only if they tell him what his little mind can comprehend.
He and Cheney are too cowardly to accept that the war that they led has been lost.
So therefore, Abizaid is now off to “spend more time with his family“.
Such is the fate of dissenters. The Bush Administration is to be filled only with “YES MEN”.
Just look at sad Harriet Miers (Bush’s legal counsel). She has been dismissed because they feel that she will be too weak to successfully insulate the President from the oncoming investigations from the Democrats. I love it.
This is the SAME WOMAN that these duplicious characters were offering up for the Supreme Court–the one who Bush thought the “most qualified” lawyer in the country– suddenly is not competent enough to provide simple legal counsel for him anymore.
What a joke. Can anyone still believe these deceptive weasels?
President Confronts Dissent on Troop Levels
Bush Indicates Military Won’t Dictate Numbers; Top General to Retire
by Peter Baker (Washington Post Staff Writer)“The debate over sending more U.S. troops to Iraq intensified yesterday as President Bush signaled that he will listen but not necessarily defer to balky military officers, while Gen. John P. Abizaid, his top Middle East commander and a leading skeptic of a so-called surge, announced his retirement.
At an end-of-the-year news conference, Bush said he agrees with generals “that there’s got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished” before he decides to dispatch an additional 15,000 to 30,000 troops to the war zone. But he declined to repeat his usual formulation that he will heed his commanders on the ground when it comes to troop levels. Bush sought to use the 52-minute session, held in the ornate Indian Treaty Room in a building adjacent to the White House, to sum up what he called “a difficult year for our troops and the Iraqi people” and reassure the American public that “we enter this new year clear-eyed about the challenges in Iraq.”
Asked about his comment to The Washington Post this week that the United States is neither winning nor losing the war, Bush pivoted forward. “Victory in Iraq is achievable,” he said. The tension between the White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the proposed troop increase has come to dominate the administration’s post-election search for a new strategy in Iraq.
The uniformed leadership has opposed sending additional forces without a clear mission, seeing the idea as ill-formed and driven by a desire in the White House to do something different even without a defined purpose.
Abizaid’s announcement amid that debate could shift the dynamics. His retirement in March had been expected, given that he has led the U.S. Central Command longer than any predecessor and had already extended his assignment at the request of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But Abizaid has been a forceful voice of doubt about the utility of a surge, and his imminent departure could make it easier for the White House to shift direction”.
P.S.-Normally, Keith Olbemann’s ego gets in the way of me “liking him”, but I can’t really disagree with anything he says in this:
What a Moronic Presidential Press Conference
It’s clear Bush doesn’t understand Iraq, or Lebanon, or Gaza, or … By Fred Kaplan
(this from Slate)
“Among the many flabbergasting answers that President Bush gave at his press conference on Monday, this one—about Democrats who propose pulling out of Iraq—triggered the steepest jaw drop: “I would never question the patriotism of somebody who disagrees with me. This has nothing to do with patriotism. It has everything to do with understanding the world in which we live.” George W. Bush criticizing someone for not understanding the world is like … well, it’s like George W. Bush criticizing someone for not understanding the world. It’s sui generis: No parallel quite captures the absurdity so succinctly.
This, after all, is the president who invaded Iraq without the slightest understanding of the country’s ethnic composition or of the volcanic tensions that toppling its dictator might unleash. Complexity has no place in his schemes. Choices are never cloudy. The world is divided into the forces of terror and the forces of freedom: The one’s defeat means the other’s victory. Defeating terror by promoting freedom—it’s “the fundamental challenge of the 21st century,” he has said several times, especially when it comes to the Middle East.
But here, from the transcript of the press conference, is how he sees the region’s recent events: What’s very interesting about the violence in Lebanon and the violence in Iraq and the violence in Gaza is this: These are all groups of terrorists who are trying to stop the advance of democracy.
What is he talking about? Hamas, which has been responsible for much of the violence in Gaza, won the Palestinian territory’s parliamentary elections. Hezbollah, which started its recent war with Israel, holds a substantial minority of seats in Lebanon’s parliament and would probably win many more seats if a new election were held tomorrow.
Many of the militants waging sectarian battle in Iraq have representation in Baghdad’s popularly elected parliament. The key reality that Bush fails to grasp is that terrorism and democracy are not opposites. They can, and sometimes do, coexist. One is not a cure for the other.
Here, as a further example of this failing, is his summation of Iraq: I hear a lot about “civil war”… [But] the Iraqis want a unified country. … Twelve million Iraqis voted. … It’s an indication about the desire for people to live in a free society. What he misses is that those 12 million Iraqis had sharply divided views of what a free society meant. Shiites voted for a unified country led by Shiites, Sunnis voted for a unified country led by Sunnis, and Kurds voted for their own separate country. Almost nobody voted for a free society in any Western sense of the term. (The secular parties did very poorly.) The total number of voters, in such a context, means nothing.
Look at American history. In the 1860 election, held right before our own Civil War, 81.2 percent of eligible citizens voted—the second-largest turnout ever. Another comment from the president: “It’s in our interests that we help reformers across the Middle East achieve their objectives.” But who are these reformers? What are their objectives? And how can we most effectively help them? This is where Bush’s performance proved most discouraging.
He said, as he’s said before, “Resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists.” This may or may not be true. (Many terrorist leaders are well-off, and, according to some studies, their resentment is often aimed at foreign occupiers.) In any case, what is Bush doing to reduce their resentment? He said he wants to help Lebanon’s democratic government survive, but what is he doing about that? Bush called the press conference to announce a $230 million aid package. That’s a step above the pathetic $50 million that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had offered the week before, but it’s still way below the $1 billion or more than Iran is shoveling to Hezbollah, which is using the money to rebuild Lebanon’s bombed-out neighborhoods—and to take credit for the assistance.
As for Iraq, it’s no news that Bush has no strategy. What did come as news—and, really, a bit of a shocker—is that he doesn’t seem to know what “strategy” means. Asked if it might be time for a new strategy in Iraq, given the unceasing rise in casualties and chaos, Bush replied, “The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve their objectives and dreams, which is a democratic society. That’s the strategy. … Either you say, ‘It’s important we stay there and get it done,’ or we leave. We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the president.”
The reporter followed up, “Sir, that’s not really the question. The strategy—” Bush interrupted, “Sounded like the question to me.” First, it’s not clear that the Iraqi people want a “democratic society” in the Western sense. Second, and more to the point, “helping Iraqis achieve a democratic society” may be a strategic objective, but it’s not a strategy—any more than “ending poverty” or “going to the moon” is a strategy. Strategy involves how to achieve one’s objectives—or, as the great British strategist B.H. Liddell Hart put it, “the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy.” These are the issues that Bush refuses to address publicly—what means and resources are to be applied, in what way, at what risk, and to what end, in pursuing his policy.
Instead, he reduces everything to two options: “Cut and run” or, “Stay the course.” It’s as if there’s nothing in between, no alternative way of applying military means. Could it be that he doesn’t grasp the distinction between an “objective” and a “strategy,” and so doesn’t see that there might be alternatives? Might our situation be that grim?”
Bush’s language angers US Muslims
(from the BBC—Richard Allen Greene)
In the days after the horror of the 11 September attacks, President George W Bush made a point of saying Muslims per se were not America’s enemy. But in the five years since then, he has taken less care to emphasise that message, US Muslim leaders are saying. They are upset about his use of terms like “Islamic fascists”, which he used this week both for Hezbollah and the suspected bomb plotters held in the UK.
“It offends the vast majority of moderate Muslims,” Ahmed Younis said. “The use of the term casts a shadow upon Islam and bolsters the argument that there is a clash of civilisations between Islam and the West,” Mr Younis, the national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (Mpac), told the BBC. He said it was wrong to link the actions of violent Muslims to their religion. “There is nothing Islamic about their fascism. The Prophet [Muhammad] and the Koran clearly articulate that this type of activity is outside of bounds for Muslims.”
Regular refrain Mr Bush used the term on at least two separate occasions this week. On Monday, during a press conference from his ranch in Texas, he said terrorists “try to spread their jihadist message – a message I call … Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism”. A moment later, he said “Islamo-fascism” was an “ideology that is real and profound”.
Then, on Thursday after the arrest in Britain of two dozen people suspected of plotting of bomb planes travelling to the US, he said “Islamic fascists… will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom”. That day, the Council on American-Islamic Relations wrote to him to complain. Its chairman Parvez Ahmed condemned his “use of ill-defined hot-button terms”, which, he said, “feeds the perception that the war on terror is actually a war on Islam”. The council had not had a reply from the White House as of Friday afternoon, its legal director Arsalan Iftikhar told the BBC. Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to BBC requests for clarification of the term.
Mr Younis of Mpac said he believed the president’s use of the term was “a mistake” and that Mr Bush’s speechwriters would drop it in the future. He added that the idea that “there is a school of thought called Islamic fascism is a misnomer”.
‘Different breed’ Security expert Daniel Benjamin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies agreed that the term was meaningless. “There is no sense in which jihadists embrace fascist ideology as it was developed by Mussolini or anyone else who was associated with the term,” he said. “This is an epithet, a way of arousing strong emotion and tarnishing one’s opponent, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the content of their beliefs.
“The people who are trying to kill us, Sunni jihadist terrorists, are a very, very different breed.” Zanab Chami, a Muslim community activist in Dearborn, Michigan – home to one of the largest Arab communities in the US – said the administration had seized upon a new term to frighten people. “I think the word terrorism has lost its edge. They are looking for something with a little more oomph.” And she is afraid that such language does have an effect on how Americans view Muslims. “In the post-9/11 era, people are apt to fear Islam. These terms get thrown around so easily and it builds upon a foundation of fear that has already been instilled.”
In fact, a Gallup poll released the day of the arrests in Britain showed that two out of five Americans admit to feeling prejudice against Muslims. In Washington, Mr Younis said the president’s linking of Islam with fascism would alienate “moderate Muslims who are needed at the front line of any effort to counter terrorism or extremism by Muslims”. But in Michigan, Ms Chami said it was already too late to worry about indelicate phrases. “Members of the Muslim community here do not believe in the administration. They rightfully discount much of what President Bush says. People have closed their ears to him.”
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Mexico to support the left-wing candidate in the disputed 2 July presidential elections. “Hold on, the people are rising,” they chanted as they marched to Zocalo, Mexico City’s main public square.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is seeking a full recount of the vote which saw him lose to conservative Felipe Calderon by half a percentage point. The Federal Electoral Institute has until 31 August to decide. The dispute has paralysed Mexican politics, correspondents say. A president-elect must be declared by 6 September to replace Vicente Fox on 1 December. ‘Filthy’ poll This was the third – and the largest – protest by Mr Lopez Obrador’s supporters to press their demand for a recount.
Holding banners that read “No to fraud”, and wearing T-shirts with the image of their candidate, they made clear they would not give in until a vote-by-vote recount was authorised. “The elections were filthy,” said Maria Teresa Priego. “We are here to support a humble man, a hard-working man.” We will blockade airports, we will take over embassies Sara Zepeda Lopez Obrador supporter Other voters were more belligerent. “We will take drastic measures. We will blockade airports, we will take over embassies,” threatened Sara Zepeda, 32.
The official count gave Mr Calderon 244,000-vote victory over his opponent – out of 41 million ballots cast. The leftist candidate says there is evidence that vote counts were rigged at about half of the country’s polling stations – but European Union observers have said they found no irregularities. Mr Calderon has rejected calls for a recount, describing the election as “clean, free and democratic”.
Experts see proxy war under way in Somalia
By MOHAMED SHEIKH NOR, Associated Press
“A mysterious Russian-built cargo plane believed to be loaded with weapons landed in this capital Wednesday, setting off a fresh round of allegations that Somalia has become a proxy battleground for its neighbors Eritrea and Ethiopia.
The United States and other Western powers have cautioned outsiders against meddling in Somalia, which has no single ruling authority and can be manipulated by anyone with money and guns. But there’s little sign the warning has been heeded. Somalia’s virtually powerless government charged on Wednesday that the Ilyushin-76, only the second flight to land at Mogadishu International Airport in a decade, was packed with land mines, bombs and guns.
It said the shipment had come from Eritrea, which supports the Islamic militia that has seized the capital along with most of southern Somalia. Just hours later, a U.N. envoy confirmed that troops from Ethiopia, Eritrea’s foe, were in Somalia to protect the defenseless government from the advancing Islamic forces.
Somali government leaders and Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry previously have denied Ethiopian soldiers were in the county. However, many witnesses have confirmed their presence.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bloody border war from 1998-2000, and have since backed rebel groups to destabilize each other. Somalia could become a new front in their conflict. “Ethiopia and Eritrea are competing throughout the region, opening up new fronts in their Cold War whenever the opportunity arises,” said John Prendergast, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group, which monitors conflict zones.
The United States also has been involved in Somalia. It secretly backed nonreligious militias that were driven out of Mogadishu by the Islamists, and now supports the government. The United States has accused the Islamic militia of ties to al-Qaida, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, called for support of the militia in a recent recording. The Associated Press also recently obtained videotape of Arab Islamic fighters alongside Somali militiamen.
“There are external parties involved on all sides,” said Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. State Department’s top Africa official. “This is a problem.” The new proxy fight between Ethiopia and Eritrea is officially denied by both countries, despite witness accounts and reports by the United Nations describing Somalia’s plight. A U.N. committee monitoring the arms embargo on Somalia named Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen as countries backing different factions fighting inside the country. Another country went unnamed in the report, but was widely believed to be the United States.
“Eritrea is only in there because of Ethiopia,” said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somalia Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn. “The U.S. is simply extending its war on terrorism.” Eritrea’s information minister, Ali Abdu, told the AP on Wednesday that his country was not sending arms to the Islamic militia, and charged that Ethiopia was “exploiting the current situation in order to solve their historical dispute with Somalia.” Ethiopia and Somalia fought a war in the 1970s. Ethiopia’s foreign minister was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
Wednesday, an AP reporter watched the Ilyushin-76 land, but was quickly ordered to leave by Islamic militiamen. The plane’s tail carried a flag from Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic that often makes its planes available for charter. The U.N. special envoy to Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, said Wednesday a small number of Ethiopian troops are in Somalia. On Tuesday, he traveled to the only town controlled by the government, Baidoa, which is 155 miles from Mogadishu. “During my discussions with the government, I got the clear impression that Ethiopian troops were around Baidoa, but not in the city,”
Fall said from his office in neighboring Kenya. Somalia has been without an effective central government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, carving much of the country into armed camps ruled by violence and clan law. The government was established nearly two years ago with the support of the U.N. to serve as a transitional body to help Somalia emerge from anarchy. But the leadership, which includes some warlords linked to the violence of the past, has failed to establish any power.”
Boy doesn’t this smell familiar? Neighboring countries using failing states to fight their proxy wars. Anyone remember Afghanistan? And check out the picture at the top. The poor onlookers are just watching events happen as if spectators at their own history. Their futures dictated by sub rosa manipulation, pawns in stupid power games.
